November 2012

November 27, 2012

Lobbyists at King & Spalding have come to the aid of the world's second largest tobacco company.

BATLaw Ltd., a subsidiary of London-based British American Tobacco PLC (BAT), has enlisted the firm to lobby for it on matters concerning "discrimination and market access for tobacco products under international trade and investment rules," according to lobbying registration paperwork filed with Congress last week. King & Spalding international trade practice partners Joseph Dorn, Stephen Orava and Daniel Crosby, as well as associate Joshua Snead, are handling the account.

Dorn, the founding partner of King & Spalding’s international trade practice, and Snead are based in Washington. Crosby is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Orava splits his time between Washington and Geneva, where he is the managing partner.

Anonymous Sources: U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt directed the Department of Justice to reopen an investigation into information leaked in a Louisiana prosecution, because the federal government did not question reporters about their sources for news articles, The Times-Picayune reports. Engelhardt orders investigators to do so.

Intentionally Caught: The man who sent a fake anthrax letter to U.S. District Judge Daniel Breen in 2008 was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday, The Commercial Appeal reports. The man signed the letter and used coffee sweetener as a way to get into court to protest his 109-year sentence for blowing up his stepfather in 1984 in Mesquite, Texas.

'Batman' Combined: U.S. District Judge Brooke Jackson has combined seven federal lawsuits against the Cinemark theater chain in the wake of the mass shooting during a July screening of the latest Batman movie, Reuters reports. The plaintiffs claim, among other things, that the theater should have had more security in place.

November 26, 2012

A high-profile Native American class action in Washington that settled for $3.4 billion after more than a decade of litigation is now over, the plaintiffs' attorneys said this afternoon.

Lead plaintiff Elouise Cobell sued in June 1996 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, seeking a historical accounting of money the government held in trust accountants for Indians. (Cobell, a member of the Blackfeet Nation in Montana, died last year.)

The government and the plaintiffs' attorneys announced the historic settlement in December 2009. The deal, which potentially compensates hundreds of thousands of class members, required congressional approval. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court have concluded review of the settlement.

"The litigation finally has ended," a lead attorney for Cobell, Dennis Gingold in Washington, said in an e-mail. "Everything that Elouise Cobell spent her life fighting for now has come true. She is a true American hero."

SEC lawyers sought in the case, filed in 2009 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to permanently bar Elaine Brown, the company's former chief financial officer, from serving as an officer or director of a publicly-held company. Brown held the position from 1997 to 2007.

Brown, represented by Crowell & Moring, today settled with the commission. The civil penalty: $25,000. The SEC, however, didn't get the permanent bar. A federal district judge this summer removed that penalty from the table, ruling against the commission. In the settlement, Brown didn't admit or deny any of the SEC's allegations.

Jay
Jaffe, the founder and CEO of a public relations firm that pioneered law
industry marketing, died last week. He was 68.

Jaffe founded his Washington-based
agency, called Jaffe PR, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's 1977
Bates v. State Bar of Arizona decision, which allowed law firms to
market their services. The decision was a victory for First Amendment advocates
and helped start a new public relations sector. Today Jaffe's agency represents
law firms of all sizes, from boutiques to mid-size to Am Law 100 firms.

Jaffe was born and raised in
Chicago, and worked as a journalist for an Augusta, Ga. newspaper and
later for a CBS TV affiliate before turning to public relations.

The director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced today he will leave the position in January 2013 after more than three years implementing broad changes to the country's patent system.

David Kappos was widely respected among intellectual property lawyers for his grasp of issues regarding patents in the age of software and the internet, as well as his knowledge of how to implement change in a large organization like the patent office.

Kappos was also known for reducing the backlog of patent applications and worked hard to bring the best talent to the patent office, including reinvigorating the patent trial appeal board and the examining corps, said Michael Messinger, a partner at Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox and an adjunct professor for patent prosecution at George Mason University School of Law.

The lawyers tangled up in the dispute over access to U.S. Justice Department information about the gun investigation Operation Fast and Furious are set to meet in court in Washington tomorrow morning.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson wants the lawyers to address, among other things, whether there's a realistic possibility that DOJ and the House of Representatives oversight committee, which is seeking the enforcement of a subpoena, will settle the case.

The oversight committee sued DOJ in Washington's federal trial court in August after the full House voted, largely along party lines, to hold Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. in contempt of Congress. The committee wants to review information about the Fast and Furious gun probe—federal agents allowed firearms to flow into Mexico—and how the department responded to congressional requests about the probe.

DOJ lawyers contend that Jackson doesn't have a role in the dispute, which the department characterizes as a political tiff between Congress and the executive branch. President Barack Obama in June, at the request of Holder, asserted executive privilege over certain internal DOJ documents regarding the Fast and Furious investigation. The department's legal team in October asked Berman to dismiss the suit. "Judicial restraint, not judicial intervention, is warranted," DOJ attorneys said then.

A half-dozen lobbyists are appealing the dismissal of their suit against the government over the Obama administration's decision to prohibit federal lobbyists from sitting on agency boards and commissions. The case is being appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The lobbyists, who sought appointment or reappointment to Industry Trade Advisory Committees overseen by the Commerce Department and U.S. Trade Representative, filed a notice of appeal on Monday, two months after U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington affirmed the Obama administration's ban.

The plaintiffs are Erik Autor, who represented the National Retail Federation on an advisory board; Nate Herman, who represented the Travel Goods Association on an advisory board; Cass Johnson, who represented the National Council of Textile Organizations on an advisory board; Stephen Lamar, who represented the American Apparel & Footwear Association on an advisory board; William Reinsch, who was "interested in applying to represent the National Foreign Trade Council" on an advisory board; and Andrew Zamoyski, who represented the Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates on an advisory board, according to the lobbyists' September 2011 complaint.

Marriage cases march down the aisle: When the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court gather for their November 30 conference, Marcia Coyle reports that they will face an array of same-sex marriage related petitions that have arrived at the court in an unusual confluence of timing and strategic litigating.

Health care challenges: not dead yet: The presidential election and the U.S. Supreme Court may have secured the linchpin of the federal health care reform law — the mandate to purchase insurance — but Marcia Coyle takes a look at still-pending litigation surrounding other elements of the controversial legislation.

At host of agencies, battles brewing: For some federal agencies, President Barack Obama's second term means a second chance. From investor protection to food safety, greenhouse gas limits to new workplace injury prevention programs, Jenna Greene explores how key regulatory agencies may use the next four years to tackle unfinished business.

Holiday Shopping: Retailers on Friday said opening their doors on Thanksgiving to begin the holiday shopping season was a success, Reutersreports. "There'll be an expansion of it next year," said Liz Ebert, retail lead at consulting firm KPMG LLP.

Facebook
Concerns: A
key European regulator on Friday said parts of Facebook Inc.'s proposed new
privacy policy don't align with European Union law, The Washington Post reports. "We've already engaged with Facebook," said Gary Davis, deputy data protection commissioner in Ireland. "We expect Facebook to be reverting [to previous policies] on these issues." Under the changes, advertisers would have more data on users who don't
explicitly allow Facebook to share their information, privacy advocates said.

Outside
Investments: The effort of Jacoby & Meyers to overturn New York state's ban on outside investments in
law firms was revived last week, the New York Law Journalreports. The
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit vacated a lower court's order that
threw out the firm's challenge.